


Home For The Holidays

by honestys_easy



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Christmas, Family, Fluff, M/M, Meet the Family, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:24:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honestys_easy/pseuds/honestys_easy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blake is visiting Virginia for the holidays, and Christmas for the Richardsons will never be the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home For The Holidays

“Ow!” my brother shouted, pulling his hand back defensively as I held my spatula up in triumph. He held a hurt and confused look, green eyes hooded by a furrowed brow. “Un _called_ for, Meesh!”

I raised my own eyebrows intimidatingly, waving the spatula in the air to accentuate. “Christopher,” I called up all my years as a parent and an older sister in order to protect the sanctity of my kitchen. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Checking on the gingerbread,” he mumbled, already knowing that arguing with me on Christmas – on my own turf, right next to my gingerbread people – would be futile.

Giving him a smug smile as I shut the oven door, I said to him, “More like taste-testing the gingerbread.” Chris didn’t even try to argue – he’d been sneaking treats and tastes before Christmas dinner since before he could walk, and I was decades onto his game. “If I find just one appendage bitten off, mister, I swear –“

Chris laughed at the spatula shoved in his face; just as I was privy to his guerilla holiday snacking techniques, he was used to years of my empty threats of bodily harm. His eyes rolled to the ceiling, fingers subconsciously pawing underneath the cuff of his sweater to find two familiar rubber bands. “Yes, _Mom_ ,” he joked; he was lucky our mother wasn’t anywhere around to hear that, he’d never hear the end of it from her. “I just came to see if you needed help, fuck –“

“You kiss your boyfriend with that mouth?”

“Enough, enough you two.” Mom came bustling into the kitchen, every bit the glowing, picture-perfect hostess, the snowflake-decorated apron Chris and I bought her when I was fourteen tied securely around her waist. She was carrying back an empty tray of sea scallops wrapped in bacon strips, feet scurrying like they never stopped moving until the New Year. “If I wanted to hear you bickering any more, you’d still both be living here.” Mom attempted to keep a straight face during this but she failed, a festive smile and a glimmer in her eyes shining through.

Repressing the urge to counter with a “she started it,” Chris walked over to Mom and placed a kiss on her forehead. “How’s it going out there, Mom?” he asked, and I raised my eyebrows at the hint of anxiety in his voice. I know he wasn’t getting all nervous over the reviews of my mother’s first round of appetizers.

“Nothing to be worried about,” she said sweetly, sensing the tension in his voice as well, patting him on the back as she turned her attentions to the toaster oven. “Could you get these onto a platter and out to the living room?” she asked Chris, motioning towards the pigs-in-a-blanket Great Uncle Arnie requested every year; Mom didn’t have the heart to tell him they were from the supermarket and not homemade. “And Michelle,” she pointed to me with a kitchen towel, “the ham needs basting in a minute, could you handle that for me while I go see how the guests are doing?”

My eyebrows rose again but I stayed silent and nodded. Mom’s honey-apple glazed ham was the pinnacle of holiday cooking, anticipated by Richardsons for as long as I could remember, and she always preached that a constant watchful eye and never letting anyone else interfere were her systems to success. Now, she was putting the ham in charge of her daughter – able-bodied and a whiz in the kitchen in my own right, if I say so myself, but nowhere near the legend status of my mother – in order to “entertain guests,” and I was pretty sure she didn’t mean cousin Hannah.

Seemed that the charm of Blake Lewis worked on more than one Richardson in the family.

Chris complied soundlessly as he gathered the appetizers onto a clean plate – he saw the stricken look across Mom’s face as he tried to just use the previous plate and save dish-washing time later – and he left the kitchen to the cheers of Great Uncle Arnie. As I turned to the fridge for more honey glaze, I caught my mother by the elbow as she was shuffling out of the kitchen, heading right down the hallway towards the den instead of left to the living room. “Baby pictures?” I surmised from the amused and proud look in my mother’s eyes.

She answered in a dignified manner. “I showed every one of your boyfriends your baby pictures, and every one of his girlfriend’s his. This is exactly the same.” She smiled, her face determined, and almost challenging the other guests in the living room to prove her otherwise.

“Just don’t forget that one Halloween he dressed as a duck,” I said before she went off to embarrass my brother as only a loving parent could.

Preparing the glaze and opening up the over door to begin the basting, I thought about just that: keeping this Christmas exactly the same as others, despite the many obvious reasons why it wasn’t. I was just waiting for that eggnog-induced outburst from a family member, or the seemingly innocent observation from one of the more senile in our family, wondering where that nice, pretty Gayle girl had gone.

The Christmas dinner invitation list was considerably shorter and more selective this year, Mom and Dad aiming to protect their family as much as they could from the more judgmental branches of our family tree, as well as the ones who would sell us out to TMZ for little more than the price of a turkey sandwich. I unconsciously thought the term “our family,” thinking that yes, Blake was as much part of our family now as I was sure Chris was welcome in the Lewis household. He was kind and courteous to Mom without being obnoxiously polite about it; he let Dad teach him golf on a back 9 one Saturday afternoon and never complained once. Jack and Morgan adored him, which was all that mattered to me for him to win me over.

He respected and loved Chris with all his heart; it was more than I could say for a dozen of Chris’s exes. And it was what made my parents welcome him into our family.

But that meant inviting cousin Iris was out; she had raged fire and brimstone when Chris first got his ears pierced, proclaiming he’d be a drug addict and degenerate in less than a month, and we doubted she’d react any more favorably towards the news of Blake making a featured appearance. Mom’s brother Ben sadly yet gracefully opted out, knowing his wife had something to say about _everything_ after her third glass of sherry. The whispers and rumors breezing through our family tree turned to facts and news when the questioning phone calls started streaming in. Chris had ducked his head and said nothing, turning tomato red under his collar, but Blake stood with a straight back and defiant expression, condoning the choice to reveal it to family, stating that when it came to the Richardsons, he had nothing to hide.

After finishing up the basting and carefully placing the ham back inside the oven – if I had deviated so much as to drop one extra black pepper flake on that ham, this family would have seen some _real_ scandal – I walked into the living room to the sounds of my son squealing in amusement. Blake was entertaining him as always, the older man taking a quick shine to Jackson within five minutes of their first meeting; he was softly beatboxing to the tune of _The Little Drummer Boy_ and it had my boy in stitches, nearly rolling on the floor in spurts of giggles. An old and fraying leather photo album rested between his knees on the couch, hanging open to photo of a naked baby, butt in the air, on a shag carpet that I was sure Chris wished he burned ages ago.

The bottom-up boy in question was blushing in the hallway, twenty three years removed from the shag carpet, tray of untouched appetizers still in his hand. He was leaning up against the wall, face in a frozen, near-eternal half-smile as his eyes stayed trained on the older man taking in all the attention in the living room. I daresay his face almost looked peaceful, dreamlike, as if the world outside of these walls of our parent’s home didn’t matter or even exist. The most uncanny thing about Chris’s affection for Blake was that the other man seemed to make him utterly, inexplicably and genuinely happy – and Blake never had to do anything to incite it, just had to sit in a room surrounded by Chris’s family and simply be himself.

“Gonna join the party any time soon?” I whispered over to him, breaking out of his reverie and nearly upturning the platter in the process. He looked over at me with a start, his cheeks flaring crimson at being caught nearly ogling his boyfriend. I reached for the platter, making sure to avoid any food-related disasters until we uncorked the first bottle of wine. “Let me just take this from you,” I said, and promptly passed the pigs-in-a-blanket over to Great Uncle Arnie, who looked upon them with relish.

Chris gave a muttered “thanks” and returned his attentions to watching Blake, who was flipping through the photo album and periodically pointing at certain photographs, our mother at times giving a nod of assent or a whimsical yet highly humiliating anecdote. “He’s selling records all over the world,” Chris murmured so low I could barely hear him over Brenda Lee’s old classic wafting around the room from the radio. “He’ll be playing New Year’s Eve in Times Square in six days. And yet…” He trailed off, bottom lip curling into his mouth self-consciously, the wheels turning in his head as to why a rising star would want to spend his Christmas in Virginia, of all places.

“…And yet he’s having the time of his life, trading stories with Big Momma and guzzling hot cocoa.” I finished the sentence for him, seeing that my brother was about to break the number one guy rule and tear up in public. Placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder, I smiled, seeing Chris’s head turn to me and lock his eyes with mine. “He’s here, in boring ol’ Chesapeake, just for you.” Chris slowly matched my smile until it was bright and toothy, completely unable to hold back his happiness over the circumstances.

“Dude. _Dude_.” Blake came bounding up from the couch, eyes bright and wide, a faded photograph held up in his hand. I recognized it immediately: the cheesy, proud smile of my little brother after his first Pee-Wee football championship. He couldn’t have been more than four years old, bulked and padded, maroon jersey caked in mud and grass stains. Blake had on an incredulous expression as he presented the photo to Chris; I kindly stepped out of the hallway and into the living room to give them some space to themselves. “Is your off-season training in the _womb_ or something around here?”

Before Chris could open his mouth to respond, Blake caught sight of the platter of appetizers possessively in Uncle Arnie’s lap. With an exclamation of “Ooh, cocktail wieners!”, Blake miraculously scooped up one of the pigs-in-a-blanket from ol’ Arnie’s grasp and popped into his mouth, beaming with satisfaction. “I like wieners,” he said smuggled between bites and chews; I rolled my eyes as I crossed the spirited room full of guests into my husband’s arms, wondering how my baby brother could _possibly_ handle this man for as long as he had, for that many hours of the day.

I hadn’t heard Chris’s answer but I did see him snatch the photo from Blake’s hands, grinning, and whisper something into his ear that amazingly made the other man blush. Apparently the rest of the guests in the living room hadn’t heard Blake’s remark or even cared. Uncle Arnie didn’t seem to notice.

“Mistletoe!” squeaked Morgan gleefully, bouncing in her grandfather’s lap. She had just learned this Christmas the significance of the little sprig taped up above the foyer, and all afternoon had insisted that everyone caught underneath it to break out the true spirit of the mistletoe. In the few instances I had joined the rest of the family from my toils in the kitchen she had captured Mom and Dad in her game, as well as cousin Bill and his fiancée when they had first came into the house. Now she was pointing at the doorframe, bright innocent smile breaking out over her face, at her uncle and his boyfriend across the room.

Someone in the room coughed conspicuously; I didn’t see who had done it as my eyes were glued on my brother, mouth hanging open in anxiety. Sure, everyone in the house was quite aware of the relationship between Chris and Blake – it would be a bit difficult to explain why merely his good friend was staying away from his own family, not to mention fame and fortune, and dropping by a country-home Christmas dinner. But no one had paid any active attention to it, instead trying to keep everything as low-key as possible. Morgan, bless her soul, was ruining that air of complacent avoidance we had gotten used to all afternoon.

I thought Chris and Blake would be just as stunned as I was, but surprisingly enough my brother simply smiled at his niece, then turning to the man next to him with quite a different type of smile. Leaning down slightly, Chris placed a chaste kiss against Blake’s lips, lingering long enough to placate Morgan’s mistletoe requirements but not too long to sour the sensibilities of the rest of the room. He pulled away with a sheepish chuckle under his breath, expecting the scene to be over with and forgotten before we sat down to Mom’s glorious glazed ham in a half-hour.

But that soft peck seemed to incense something within Blake, the smile fading from his lips to reveal a more serious expression that I usually only saw when he looked at Chris when he thought no one was looking. Pressing himself up the extra two inches on the balls of his socked feet, he captured Chris’s lips again, more forceful this time, leaving Chris in a bit of a shock. Their eyes drifted closed as Chris eased into the kiss, pulling up an arm to brush his thumb affectionately against the bristle of Blake’s jaw. When they broke apart, it looked like Blake had knocked the breath out of Chris, his face still and silent but full of more emotion than I had ever seen in him before. There was a love behind that stare that was never there under the mistletoe with Gayle, or with any of the girlfriends he’d brought home for Christmas. It was a love for a man that proved, time and time again, that he wasn’t afraid to show Chris – or the world – how much he cared.

Blake then excused himself discreetly to the bathroom, blaming it on the cocoa, and Chris – after watching him go, and I’d have to remember to joke about that later – stepped back into the living room, into a room full of Richardsons that didn’t dare utter a harsh word about what had just transpired. And there was nothing to say – besides my mother taking the silent opportunity to remind me to reset the timer on the ham and me groaning that I had done so already while rolling my eyes – because what we had seen was a gesture of tenderness between my baby brother and his new love, simple and pure as the child who incited it and the pristine sprig of mistletoe hanging above them.


End file.
